When Jessa suggests that Hannah have sex with her harassing boss simply “for the story,” she’s immediately intrigued by the idea. “For the story” is a great way to justify horrible mistakes (believe me when I say that telling people I once spent a day stranded in Milan is a lot more fun than experiencing it). As a writer, Hannah sees an opportunity to turn her crazy start to adulthood into something she may be proud of down the road.

Whether that plan pans out for her remains to be seen, but Hannah wanted stories, and dammit she got them.

After delivering some files to her boss, Hannah lays her humongous balls out on the table and confronts him about having sex, taking a cue that his inappropriate touching was a sign of him wanting to sleep her. She forces herself on him by putting his hand on her breast and attempts some form of dirty talk before her boss breaks out in laughter, which I could only imagine is the absolute most demoralizing thing to a person trying to put the moves on someone. Turns out the guy isn’t as sleazy as we thought. Hannah tries to turn the situation around, demanding money or she’ll sue him, and again he laughs and jabs “there’s no suing app on your iPhone.” In a moment of realization (maybe?), Hannah quits, only her boss doesn’t want her to (she’s a great worker, despite trying to fuck, sue and extort him). His plea doesn’t work, however, and Hannah walks out.

As Hannah usually does after one of her wondrous mistakes, she goes to Adam’s. After some back-and-forth bickering as to where their relationship currently stands (Hannah thinks that their fight last episode has brought them closer than ever, while Adam figures, “It’s a bummer, but people do outgrow each other”), Hannah tells Adam the story of the near “sex scandal” at her office, claiming that maybe she just wanted to do it to be an asshole.

As she’s about to leave, she walks in on Adam masturbating, in a scene that is both horrifyingly and wonderfully Girls. Hannah is grossed out at first, but then Adam convinces her to stay “for the story,” which once again turns Hannah on. She stays, degrades him, steals his money, and finally feels a sense over power of him. Girls continues to top itself with the tense and mortifying sex scenes, and I’m not sure what this incident means for the future of Hannah and Adam, but for that moment, Hannah feels relieved that she got her story.

One of Hannah’s story’s that didn’t have quite the happy ending was the one she wrote about Charlie and Marnie in her notebook (not a journal, FYI). Charlie’s realization of Marnie’s feelings through Hannah’s writing gives us Marnie’s busiest plot to date. Even though it was clear to us as viewers and to Hannah that Marnie was simply going through the motions with Charlie, when he demands they split, she gets petrified. She tries to convince herself that she loves him because she feels safe with him, which was displayed nicely in a flashback scene to college where Marnie met Charlie while she was tripping on pot brownies at a party, and he was there to hug her and make her feel better.

Even though Marnie’s spark for Charlie was gone a long time ago, she hasn’t confronted the idea of him never being able to be there to comfort her again. At Charlie’s apartment, the two share a heart-to-heart regarding their feelings for each other, and though there’s definitely some form of love between these two, it’s painfully obvious that there’s no hope in saving what they once had, though that doesn’t stop Marnie from trying, pleading that she’d do anything to get back with him. Maybe Charlie is still in love with Marnie, or maybe he’s just as weak as most of us and succumbed to her offer of blowjobs, but not far into their make-up sex does Marnie realize she’s made a huge mistake and declares she wants to break up after all. It’s a bummer, but people do outgrow each other.

Girls never wants us to forget the ultimate theme of the show: that these people aren’t even remotely ready for real life yet. “We’re not grown ups,” Charlie tells Marnie. Adam goes out of his way to call Hannah “Kid” twice. I guess the question is how many of these stories do we need to pile up in order to get to where we want to be?

Other Thoughts:

— After some complaints about last week’s episode being light on laughs, this installment brought some very funny moments: Charlie taking his coffee table back, Ray’s return to ranting in the coffee shop, the exchange with the boss, the mental image of Jessa pushing her ex-boyfriend’s Vespa into the water.

— Jessa after Marnie ate the pot brownie: “Does it feel like your heart’s gonna fall out from your vagina? I want one.”

— I’ve praised the show’s realism before, but a few things bothered me here; would Hannah really quit her job after all her freaking out about employment in previous episodes? Even for Hannah it seems like a stretch. Also, Marnie’s been dating Charlie for nearly five years and never once been to his apartment? “You know how hard it is for me to get here from work!” SHUT UP.

— Jessa’s storyline was short and sweet, showing her dominance in always getting what she wants by sleeping with her ex and not giving a single fuck about it. I’ve learned that even among people who like the show, Jessa doesn’t seem to be a favorite character, but her lack of social norms give her odd charm and great humor that I can’t help but love.

— Shoshonna gets her only action in the episode by being a horrifying spectator of Jessa’s crazy sex. Amazingly, Sho is more mortified than Jessa, as she just teases her for being a little perv. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to hang out with this girl?